Kevin Love Trade Rumors: 5 Ways T’Wolves Get Better

The latest Kevin Love trade rumors come via Brian Windhorst, who reported that the Minnesota Timberwolves and Cleveland Cavaliers have a handshake deal that would complete the Love-for-Andrew Wiggins deal that has been circulating for the better part of six weeks. Windhorst mentioned this on a radio spot with Chris Broussard and Ryan Ruocco, but interestingly enough, he hasn’t written anything on it for ESPN just yet.

Let’s assume these rumors are true and Love gets sent to the Cavaliers for a package centered around Wiggins and Anthony Bennett. The reason Bennett is key here is that the Wolves have been in talks with the Philadelphia 76ers in an effort to bring in Thaddeus Young. Bennett would likely have to be moved to Philadelphia for that to happen, so we’ll continue under that assumption for the sake of this piece.

This is how I see the trade going down (obviously, nothing is confirmed):

Minnesota sends Kevin Love and J.J. Barea to Cleveland Cavaliers for Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett and Tristan Thompson

Note: there would be picks involved here but they don’t really affect this column, so we won’t speculate on what they are. This trade is also about a million off in salaries, so a bit player may have to be added (or the Wolves could swap Barea with Kevin Martin to make it work, though they seem hellbent on getting rid of Barea).

Minnesota would then send Bennett and Thompson to the Philadelphia 76ers for Thaddeus Young (with picks also involved).

The depth chart would shake out like this:

PG — Ricky Rubio, Mo Williams
SG — Kevin Martin, Andrew Wiggins, Alexey Shved, Zach LaVine
SF — Corey Brewer, Chase Budinger, Shabazz Muhammad
PF — Thaddeus Young, Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Robbie Hummel
C — Nikola Pekovic, Gorgui Dieng, Ronny Turiaf

Here’s five reasons that team is better than the current lineup with Love in the mix.